Update! FINALLY!

HELLO!! First of all, thank you to all of my sweet friends who have been asking for new blog posts...it is so nice to know that I have such awesome girls who love to read about us and worry about me when I am gone! :-) I promise to get back to normal!!

We finally got home yesterday after the ice storm that blew through here. April says it right...why not some fluffy snow for a change instead of freaking ice!?!? UGH! I was planning on coming home Tuesday morning bright and early, but that plan quickly changed. I had been so wrapped up with taking care of Colin that I neglected to watch the news and did not realize the ice storm was coming so soon. I knew it was coming, but thought I had more time to get home. My poor kitty Ferris Mewler had been home alone since THURSDAY, and I had already pushed the trip one extra day in Tyler. I was having so much fun being with my family that I was loathe to come home to an empty house to pay bills. The thought was simply not appealing. ;-) Anyway, I had left big bowls of food and water, but by Tuesday morning I was really worried about my kitty and quickly started to freak out when I found out I would not make it home. Luckily my neighbor Corey was able to come over and check on him. Now, I was not exactly pleased that I had to give access to my huge wreck of a house to my neighbor, but I sure did sleep better once I knew Ferris was warm, fed, and still alive to bite me when I got home. :-) And he did bite me when I got home!

The picture above is of Colin and Jackson playing in the crib at my parents house. They were SO CUTE during this trip...that was half the reason I did not want to come home! Colin has finally gotten old enough to appreciate playing with Jackson and they tore it up the entire time! Colin was in awe of Jackson and trying to do everything he did. J-man is exactly two years older than Colin and it makes me really think about having another child soon...they seemed to be the perfect age difference from each other. They are still close enough to enjoy playing together, but Jackson is old enough to be a rock star to Colin. :-) I am already passed the point of them being exactly two years apart, but I do think it will be a good idea to get started trying this year. Maybe. I should probably approve this with a certain husband first. Anywhoo...the trip to Tyler was incredibly fun and it was so nice to have lots of other eyes to watch Colin. My parents have truck loads of toys for the boys and Colin loved having new stuff to attack. We ate out at my favorite spots and spent our evenings relaxing by the fire. I love seeing how much Colin adores his family. He is especially close to his Aunt Alie and would run up to climb in her lap constantly. I am the only other person he does that with, and when Alie is there, I am chopped liver. I think it is because she spent so much time with us when he was born and he has a deep attachment to her. I love that. Aunt Meredith and I are at the back of the list. ;-)

SO, we are pretty much up to date now. Jer is doing well in London, although he is training in the overnight sessions right now, so we don't get to talk much. He is really ready to come home and we are literally dying to see him. He seems to have gotten his fill of jolly old England. He might even make it home a few days early, which would be SO GOOD! Let's hope!!

The Rose Garden Shoot

We are officially home now from our long weekend at my parents house. We had a great time and Colin was thrilled beyond measure to have an entirely different house to tear around. I had to spend the first hour we were at the house moving all of my mothers nice things to high places. :-) On Saturday afternoon, we all went out to The Rose Garden to attempt a Christmas card photo for my parents. My mom had her heart set on a picture with her grandsons this year...she even bought them adorable matching Ralph Lauren shirts. The boys looked precious, but it was 4:30 in the afternoon and Colin had skipped his afternoon nap. Needless to say, most of the shots were disasters, but we did manage to get a couple of pictures that can probably be used. I took these pictures with my camera while we were roaming the garden. Once Colin found that puddle, nothing would do but making a muddy mess. :-) We rolled up his jeans and let him have at it. You will also note Jackson and Colin hugging...they were so sweet!! It melted the whole family to see how much they love each other! Precious cousins!! This last shot is one of my favorites of Colin...he is turning into such a little boy! Look at that smile!!

Home and Raising Boys

One of my very best friends, Melissa, wrote a blog entry tonight that got me thinking about my home town. She wrote about how much she missed it and how funny it is that she spent her youth wanting to leave and her adulthood wanting to go back. I have a lot of those feelings myself and while the option of returning to our home town is not possible for me, I do still think of it as "home". She reminded me of this and I have now been analyzing what it is, exactly, about where I grew up that seems more like a "hometown" than where I live now.

Of course, at first glance, the reason that T-town seems like the perfect hometown is because...well...it IS my hometown! I know that immediately makes me biased to it, but I think it goes further than spending my entire childhood there. My home sits alone without being attached to a big city. It is not the suburb of anything and it is the kind of small town that is big enough to have all the nice amenities you need, but small enough to still feel cozy. We live in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex now and while we live in a wonderful top rated suburb, things here are not the same. Regardless of living in a town with a population of only 38,000, we are a quick drive from huge metropolis areas. We are surrounded by so much, that I know my son will not think of our suburb as his hometown. When people ask him where he is from, I think he will probably say "Ft. Worth". There is nothing wrong with being from a big city, but I think that it was a lot of fun to grow up surrounded by a kind of idealistic reality where you felt like you knew everyone. I think Colin will probably end up being far more sophisticated than I was. :-)

Also on my mind tonight is, shockingly, the MTV Video Music Awards. They aired last weekend and this idiot so-called comedian spent almost the entire show making fun of a very young pop group called "The Jonas Brothers" who wear "promise rings". The boys have apparently made it known that they wear these rings in an effort to show that they are saving themselves until marriage. The host of the show made a running joke about the boys and talked constantly about "joyous unprotected sex" and how "there is nothing wrong with a little sex every now and then" and just a whole bunch of stuff to that effect. This really got me thinking about how hard it is going to be to raise Colin. I was not allowed to watch MTV when I was growing up and it made me so mad. I, of course, watched at friends houses and everywhere else I could. I never could understand, but it has hit me like a ton of bricks since I became a mother myself. How can I teach Colin that having sex is a huge responsibility that should wait until he is older when the practice of waiting is ridiculed so steadily in pop culture? Let me tell you, that whole broadcast made being a "good boy" into being a loser. I hope that I can instill good values in my son and I am going to work hard to do so, but I can certainly see how hard it will be with all that I am up against in society today. I know that is the job of parents and I am up for the challenge. It sure would be a lot easier, however, if we had a little more help from "the village". It is funny...I was watching 90210 tonight, which is a teen show marketed to teens, and the whole thing is about sex and drugs. In fact, in the opening scene of the first show, a teenage girl was doing something very indecent, shall we say, to a guy in his car at school. It makes me laugh that my whole world is now filtered through my "mom vision". I cringed and thought, yet again, "How will I explain that to Colin?". I have my work cut out for me, that is for sure. However, we had lots of stuff like that on TV when I was growing up, albeit not quite so extreme, and my parents managed to turn me into a pretty good girl, if I do say so myself. So all is not lost!